Reasons Why Cloud-Based Businesses Will Grow Faster

With today’s changing technology, there are many considerations for your business’ technological needs. One of the decisions that many business owners have to take is where to store their information.

Far too many disasters have happened with local server storage to ignore the data.  Delta Air Lines, a leader in domestic and international travel, in 2016 witnessed heavy losses due to the computer outage.

Delta lost power to its booking system and had to cancel over 1,000 flights and it cost the carrier $100 million in revenue altogether. The mishap could have been averted if the American carrier had been working on a cloud-based system. Even without power to the computers on the ground, they would not have had to cancel the flights.

The cloud storage would have allowed them to manage the data remotely which certainly wouldn’t have caused trouble to their customers. All these problems – the downtime, lost sales, increased costs – are detrimental to companies bottom line and it negatively impacts the companies growth.  Delta is a heavy hitter so it weathered the storm, but can your organization survive a $100 million loss?

In most cases, the answer is no.

So, the only way to avert such a mishap is to move to the cloud. Here are a few of the reasons why cloud-based businesses will grow faster.

Virtually unlimited room for growth

Businesses that have to store information will always face the question of potential storage ceilings unless of course, you are working with a cloud-based system.

No matter what type of business you are operating, if you are working on internal servers, storage space is limited and an expensive option. When incorporating cloud-based software it will allow for a larger amount of data storage. This is especially important for businesses in the food industry trying to grow their company. With cloud-based POS becoming increasingly more popular, restaurants can now house their stocking and inventory needs in one place without worrying about a storage cap.

Take Learning Management System (LMS)  Software for example. If you switch over to  a cloud-based LMS Software, the question goes from “how much growth can we manage this quarter?” to “How much growth do we want this quarter?”

Enterprise services are at your fingertips

Server based businesses have a huge disadvantage when it comes with Software as a Service (or SaaS business models), particularly with enterprise applications. Cloud-based businesses allow for enterprise applications, including most cloud-based LMS software platforms are available on a flexible, per-user basis. Cloud services also relieve companies of license management overhead.  This also rings true for Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service model.

Find growth opportunities everywhere

Whether it is decreased time to market, an increase in process efficiency or a reduction in IT spending, cloud-based companies find room to grow virtually everywhere they look. One of the key benefits that the cloud technology provides is that the failure cost is almost nil or very low. Moreover, the cloud allows new services to be developed at a quick pace without spending time on the trial-and-error process.

Depend on the cloud servers and low downtime ad

At first approximation, cloud servers are always reliable and have high-efficiency rate. In reality, most cloud servers have a 99.99% reliability factor in uptime.  Businesses that rely on cloud services can confidently serve their customer base with virtually no downtime.  In the marketplace today, with an increasing demand for fast and reliable service, this is of growing importance.  Imagine if Delta had been using cloud-based computing instead, they would have been able to operate with minimized disruption.

Improves organizational collaboration

Some of the best ways to increase your efficiency in product development and operational capacity are to facilitate collaboration. Cloud-based businesses and applications allow for groups within your organization who may be separated geographically or work on different schedules to easily share files, information and have virtual meetings in real-time. This is possible for most cloud applications like an LMS because they offer shared storage locations for their customers.

Cost Efficiency

Cost efficiency is a significant practical reason why cloud-based businesses are expected to grow faster. Cloud computing offers several cost-saving benefits compared to traditional on-premises models. Let’s delve deeper into this topic to understand how businesses can achieve cost efficiency.

Reduced Capital Expenditure:

One of the primary advantages of cloud computing is its pay-as-you-go pricing model. With traditional on-premises systems, businesses have to make substantial upfront investments in hardware, software licenses, and infrastructure. In contrast, cloud-based businesses can avoid significant capital expenditures as they don’t need to purchase and maintain physical infrastructure. Instead, they can access cloud services on a subscription basis, paying only for the resources and services they use. This cost-effective approach allows businesses to allocate their financial resources more efficiently, especially for startups and small businesses with limited budgets.

Elimination of Hardware Costs:

Cloud-based businesses can eliminate the need to purchase and maintain expensive hardware equipment, such as servers, storage devices, and networking devices. In a traditional on-premises setup, businesses must estimate their hardware requirements upfront, often resulting in either underutilization or overprovisioning.

Lower Operational Costs:

Cloud computing can significantly reduce operational costs for businesses. In traditional on-premises setups, businesses must allocate dedicated IT staff and resources to manage and maintain their infrastructure, including tasks such as hardware provisioning, software updates, security patching, and troubleshooting. Cloud-based businesses can leverage the expertise and resources of cloud service providers, who take care of these operational tasks.

Efficient Resource Utilization:

Cloud computing enables businesses to optimize resource utilization and avoid unnecessary expenses. With traditional on-premises setups, businesses often overprovision their resources to handle peak demands, resulting in underutilization during non-peak periods. This leads to wasted capacity and increased costs. Cloud-based businesses, on the other hand, can dynamically scale their resources up or down based on actual demand. This elasticity allows them to efficiently allocate resources and pay only for what they need.

Cost Savings in Maintenance and Upgrades:

Cloud service providers handle the maintenance and upgrades of the underlying infrastructure and software, relieving businesses of the associated costs. This includes tasks like hardware maintenance, software updates, security patches, and system upgrades.

Economies of Scale:

Cloud service providers operate on a large scale, serving a vast number of customers across various industries. This scale allows them to achieve economies of scale, driving down costs for their customers.

Cost Savings in Disaster Recovery:

Cloud-based businesses can achieve cost savings in disaster recovery (DR) compared to traditional on-premises DR setups. In traditional setups, businesses must invest in duplicate hardware, data replication, and backup infrastructure to ensure business continuity in case of a disaster. This can be expensive and complex to set up and maintain. Cloud service providers typically offer built-in disaster recovery features and services as part of their offerings.

Continuous Updates and Maintenance

Cloud service providers handle the responsibility of maintaining and updating the underlying infrastructure, hardware, and software. This relieves businesses of the burden of managing these tasks themselves, allowing them to focus more on their core competencies and innovation.

Cloud providers often release regular updates and improvements to their services, ensuring that businesses have access to the latest features and enhancements without interruption.

Conclusion

No matter the industry your company operates in, I am in favor of cloud-based services because it comes with proven efficiency. It can support easy tasks such as cloud-based file sharing and complex yet necessary ones like offering your employees continuing education opportunities.

There’s no harm in saying that cloud technology will open a whole new world of services, platforms, applications and much more. As cloud is extremely beneficial, it will make businesses more efficient, productive.